Over a period of time, Malda, in West Bengal, has emerged as a major
transit route for Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) couriers. FICN
produced and distributed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
bosses, is brought into India by couriers, principally through Malda
via Bangladesh and Nepal. From here it is circulated across India.

Sanchita
Bhattacharya

The District of Malda in West
Bengal, bordering Bangladesh, has emerged as an area afflicted
by a plethora of problems, most significantly including the
smuggling and distribution of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN),
illegal cultivation of narcotics and illegal migration – which
have a far-reaching impact on the security situation of region,
in particular, and the country at large.

Part of the Jalpaiguri Division of
West Bengal, and extending over 3,733 square kilometers, the
Malda District is bordered by the North and South Dinajpur
Districts (West Bengal) in the north, the Nadgaon and
Chapainawabganj Districts of Bangladesh in the east, Murshidabad
District (West Bengal) in the south, and Purnia (Bihar) and
Sahibganj (Jharkhand) Districts in the west.

Over a period of time, Malda has emerged as a major transit route for
FICN couriers. FICN produced and distributed by Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) bosses, is brought into India by
couriers, principally through Malda via Bangladesh and Nepal. From here
it is circulated across India. Indeed, an unnamed official of the
National Investigative Agency (NIA), according to an October 6, 2012,
report, disclosed that, “Malda in West Bengal is one of the most
well-known transit points for bringing in counterfeit notes from
Bangladesh and Nepal. Earlier this year [2012], we arrested some Malda
individuals for engaging in organised smuggling and circulation of
counterfeit notes. We suspect that they were printed in Pakistan and
were being brought to India via Bangladesh and Nepal. Two of the
arrested, Morgen Hussain and Rakib Sheikh, were coordinating the
operation”. Morgen Hussain and Rakib Sheikh had been arrested on January
6, 2012.

In January 2011, four Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM)
militants arrested from the Janipura area of Jammu city - Showkat
Kucchhay and Sahil Mubarak (belonging to Kulgam District of Jammu and
Kashmir) and Zakir Hussain and Shahidul Hassan (residents of Malda
District) - revealed that Mushtaq Ahmed Khan – the FICN ‘mastermind’ in
West Bengal, with links to the HM and Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami Bangladesh
(HuJI-B)
– was headquartered at Malda District. Khan was receiving consignments
of fake currency from Pakistan and smuggling these into Malda, where it
was stored in fields at already decided locations. Khan hired some women
to pick up the consignments and shift these to his headquarters in Malda,
from where the FICN was distributed among HM militants and Over Ground
Workers (OGWs) of terrorist formations in different parts of India.

The disclosures added, further, that two types of FICNs were being
supplied from Malda. One set was of very high quality and was difficult
to distinguish from genuine notes, and was printed in Pakistan’s
security presses. The second type of currency was of relatively poor
quality and could easily be detected as fake; this was distributed by
the militants among the families of slain and arrested militants, OGWs,
and other extremist sympathizers.

According to an April 6, 2012, report, the NIA claimed that West Bengal
was the main transit point for FICN consignments. In January 2012,
following synchronized operations by different state agencies and the
Border Security Force (BSF), NIA held 14 persons, including Morgen
Hossain and Rakib Seikh from Jamshedtola in Malda District. These
arrests led to the recovery of specific evidence to back claims that all
the fake notes circulated in India were printed in Pakistan and smuggled
through Bangladesh and Nepal. Meanwhile, as reported on October 1, 2012,
the BSF took up the matter of FICN with its Bangladeshi counterpart, the
Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), and proposed the setting up of a joint
task force to check the smuggling of FICNs.

Three nodal centres for distribution of FICN have been identified –
Jammu in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), Malda in West Bengal and Nepal. The FICN
menace in Malda District has also been documented in West Bengal’s
Criminal Investigation Department’s (CID) Criminal Intelligence
Gazette – 2003-November, 2012, which records that a total of 211
persons were arrested in 133 incidents, since 2003, along with FICN
worth INR 12.7525 million in Malda District.

Further, the arrest of Malda-based Barkat Ali at the Guwahati (Assam)
Railway Station on March 12, 2012, uncovered the involvement of
militants from northeast India in the FICN racket. AMarch
18, 2012, report indicated that the Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI) had exposed the FICN racket that operated in India’s Northeast,
with the help of militants in Nagaland, through a well knit network
across the Northeast.

Malda has also registered a steep rise in illicit poppy cultivation.
According to the Narcotics Control Bureau(NCB)
report for 2011-2012, the agency destroyed poppy crops cultivated in 714
acres of land in West Bengal, of which 711 acres were in Malda District,
and just three acres in the Hooghly and Burdwan Districts. Poppy
cultivation is mostly spread over the Kaliachak and Baishnabnagar Police
Station areas in Malda. Significantly, all the FICN cartels across India
are also tracked to these two areas. A senior Malda Police official
noted, further, that “poppy cultivation has spread cross border and at
the villages on zero lines, beyond the fencing where we have little
vigil.”

The CID’sCriminal
Intelligence Gazettealso
recorded14 incidents
of arrests in Malda since 2003 in connection with the narcotics trade,
with 25 people arrested, and 179.65 kilograms of narcotics seized. AJuly
14, 2012, report quoted an unnamed senior NCB official saying, “The
lethal gum from the poppy plants is processed to heroin, which heads for
clandestine international markets, mostly through the Indo-Bangladesh
border at Malda, Murshidabad and Bongaon in the State. Earlier, the
consignment used to reach these border points, however, now they have
started cultivating the plants at the border point and it is now easier
to send the consignment to the international market.”

Excise Department Superintendent, Arunabha Pal added, "During the
financial year of 2010-2011, 237.07 hectares of land was used for poppy
seed cultivation in the District [Malda]. The Department had registered
21 cases regarding this matter and poppy seeds worth INR 3.292 crore
[32.92 million] were destroyed”. Kaliachak-II and III blocks, Manikchak,
Ratua, Bamangola, Chanchal, Harischandrapur, Old Malda and parts of
English Bazaar Police Station areas were used for poppy seed
cultivation. Pal further disclosed that the interior areas along rivers
Ganga and Fulohar were principally used for cultivation. The porous
border along Malda and Murshidabad is used to smuggle concentrated resin
to Bangladesh. The fine heroin is smuggled back into India through this
passage.

The presence of these two scourges -FICNand
drugs – has created spaces for the growth of terrorist activities and
networks in the District as well. The Purnia (Bihar)-Malda link has
gradually been consolidated as a transit point for terrorists, between
India and Bangladesh. The Pakistan-based HuJI terrorist, Shahid Bilal,
who is alleged to have masterminded several bomb blasts across the
Indian hinterland, was reportedly raising funds by running weapons
between the Malda and Bangladesh. Several other arrests have underlined
Malda’s significance as a terror-destination. The most prominent among
these include:

October 13, 2012: NIA, with the help of BSF and local Police, arrested
Badal Sheikh from Manoharpur in Malda District for his alleged links
with the J&K-based HM.

August 5, 2011: Malda Police arrested Mohammad Salim Khan, an alleged HM
militant. From a letter sent by NIA to Malda Police, it was learned that
an FIR was pending against Salim in Jammu.

June 11, 2010: Malda and Murshidabad Police arrested four persons along
with 450 kilograms of explosives from a warehouse in Malda's Kaliachak
area.

November 24, 2009: Jahangir Mominaliasof
Saidul Sheikh, involved in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) racket
and having alleged links with ISI, was arrested from Ratua in Malda.

January 12, 2009: A Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)
terrorist, identified as Safique IliyasaliasDeepak,
was arrested by the CID from Malda District. Safique, a resident of
Rajshahi in Bangladesh, was instructed to spy on the movement of Army
personnel in Siliguri in Darjeeling District.

July 31, 2009: Ekramul Hoque, a Bangladeshi arms dealer, having links
with Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) and Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS), was arrested
by BSF at Sasani in Kaliachak area of Malda District.

August 7, 2008: The BSF arrested three Bangladeshi nationals, with
alleged links to HuJI-B, while they were trying to cross over into
India, at the Doulatpur border in the Baisnabnagar area of Malda
District. Three mobile phones, USD 16,000, INR 16,000 and maps of
different parts of India, were seized from them.

December 22, 2007: Mohammad Tariq Qasmi and Khalid Mujahid, two HuJI
militants in Uttar Pradesh (UP), were arrested in Malda. Brij Lal, the
then Additional Director-General of Police, UP, stated that money was
delivered to Qasmi through local contacts and the bombs were made and
supplied by MukhtaraliasRaju,
who has made several trips to Bangladesh through the Malda district in
West Bengal.

March 20, 2005: Police arrested LeT militant, Nassir Sheikh, from
Salehpur village in Malda and disclosed that they were on the lookout
for others, who had reportedly re-grouped in this District after fleeing
north India.

The CID’sCriminal
Intelligence Gazettenoted,
further, that a total of 38 incidents of arrest had taken place in Malda
District under Arms Act since 2003, with 64 persons arrested.

Malda also provides a corridor from where illegal migrants can easily
access other parts of the country. The unskilled labour force across
India has seen a dramatically increasing representation of illegal
Bangladeshi immigrants. A December 11, 2012, report indicated that the
BSF was cracking down on labour agents who place Bangladeshi migrants to
various industries in West Bengal and in India’s Northeast. The BSF
identified 32 of 866 border outpost areas on the eastern border as
‘sensitive’ in this context. Most of these areas fell in Petrapole
(North 24 Paragana District) and Malda District of West Bengal, and
Dhubri District of Assam. The problem of virtually unchecked human
trafficking is compounded by the fact that Malda District provides ready
access to Nepal through North Bengal. State Intelligence reports note,
“They [illegal migrants] disperse to various parts, including Rajasthan,
Punjab and Assam… But most of these trespassers prefer to go to Malda
town first." High volumes of illegal migration also create a significant
potential that can be exploited by terrorist groups. A senior
intelligence official thus observed: "Before venturing out to the rest
of the country it is easy for the suspected terrorists to find a hideout
in Malda. Also, it is easy to enter rural Malda via Kolkata after
carrying out terrorist activities elsewhere in the country”.

Malda has become the locus of a complex of criminal activities with
intricate linkages to the ISI-backed network of terrorism in the region.

Unfortunately, these setbacks have
impacted the District in multifarious ways causing terror trouble. If
untamed for long, the District can fall into perpetual instability,
providing more scope to the terror groups and rogue elements to thrive.

[Author is a Research
Associate with Institute for Conflict Management. Source: satp.org]